Author Q&A: What chickens can teach us about creativity

Architects, surgeons, sculptors, poets, chefs, and knitters all practice creativity in their fields of interest and expertise. Historians, novelists, landscapers, and nurses find creative ways to put their skills into action. Creativity lives in all of us and reveals itself in uncountable variations and configurations.

For my friend Ann Byle, it was a flock of chickens that set her on a path of creative discovery. Her book Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens(Broadleaf) launches today! This little, accessible hardback book offers a link between backyard hens and the God-given creative impulses we all hold. My older sis raises chickens, and she tells me they have distinct personalities. Ann apparently sees the same phenomenon and connects the world of chickens with creativity—one of my favorite subjects. You don’t have to be “a creative” to qualify as creative. Here Ann answers questions about creativity, chickens, and living a creative life. 

Q: Chickens? Really? What about chickens sparked your creativity to write this book?

A: One day I was working on my laptop at a table on my deck. Up popped a chicken who stared at me over my laptop and seemed to ask, “What are you doing, Ann? Can I help? Got any snacks?” I started posting pictures of them on Instagram and people liked it. Pretty soon I was discovering how creative chickens really are, and how we would all do well to mirror that creativity in our lives. It was an odd and funny juxtaposition—chickens and creativity—but it worked. I had originally planned to do the book just for writers, but my publisher asked to expand its audience to all creatives. A creative and brilliant idea. 

Q: What are some of the characteristics of a creative person?

A: Creatives are curious about the world around them and, particularly, about the field they work or play in. Knitters are curious about new yarns and patterns. Bible scholars are interested in the newest research and archaeological discoveries that impact Scripture. Architects are curious about new design tools or materials. Gardeners are curious about new types of flowers or vegetables.

Creatives are also courageous explorers, willing to step outside boundaries to find new ways to work and live. With that comes the ability to say no to negative self-talk and to ignore what others say about their art, plans, dreams, and goals. Their ultimate authority is God, not others; they move forward with God’s pleasure in mind. Another thing creatives do is nurture their creativity through things like reading widely, exploring outdoor places, visiting museums, going on retreats, unplugging tech, tasting new foods or going new places. Creative people are always looking at new ways to do things, asking new questions, trying new things.

Q: In February I ate a grasshopper. For sure that was a new thing. What do you mean when you say that all people are creative in some way?

A: I’m convinced that God has gifted everyone to be creative in their own way. I have a friend who makes the most glorious purses, totes, and wallets with leftover fabric and a sewing machine. Another is an entrepreneur who can see the big picture and moves forward to change our community for the better. Whether we are bankers or elder care workers, therapists or builders, each of us has a level of creativity that we can nurture and explore in our jobs or our personal lives. Whether we choose to develop that creativity is another story. So many people think they aren’t creative, but we all are if we can find our creative niche and get over our fear. 

Q: What did you learn about yourself as you wrote this book? 

A: I learned that my inherent nosiness about life and people is about being curious, and that my role as a journalist and writer is part of that. It’s okay to be a little nosy—despite what my kids used to say about not talking to any of their friends. Also, creativity is fun. I loved learning how to play the ukulele, decorate a cake, knit, and draw chickens as part of writing this book. Being creative is about living life fully and using all of our gifts well.

Q: Random: Tell us some trivia about chickens that we can use at parties?

A: Chickens are smart animals! They can learn and remember things, communicate, and express their opinions. Also, who knew that the color of the egg is most often determined by the color of a chicken’s ear lobes? Our hens have red/brown ear lobes and lay brown eggs. White ear lobes? White eggs. 

Yup. Definitely did not know about chicken earlobes. 

Ann Byle is a freelance writer and book author who lives in West Michigan with her family and a variety of animals including three chickens. Find her at annbylewriter.com.

An Untidy Faith: New from Kate Boyd

Kate Boyd is one of my travel buddies. We've been to Kenya, the UK (photo of us at Dover Castle below), Italy, and Mexico together. And she's the author of An Untidy Faith (Herald Press, April 2023)—which launches today! The host of the Happy & Holy podcast and a seminary student, Kate helps weary and wounded Christians rebuild their relationship with Scripture and community and to love God and their neighbors with their whole selves.

In the wake of scandal, culture wars, and abuse, many Christians wonder whether the North American church is redeemable—and if not, whether they should even stay. While many are answering "no" to those questions, An Untidy Faith is for those who long to disentangle their faith from all the cultural baggage and recapture the joy of following Jesus.

Through personal anecdotes, encounters with the global church (some of which we experienced together), deep dives into Scripture, and helpful historical context about Christianity, An Untidy Faith takes readers on two journeys. The first journey lays out the grand vision of Christianity and the legacy passed on to us by the early believers in hopes of renewing readers' belief in the church writ large. The second journey helps believers understand why they feel distant from their church settings and provides a reorientation drawn from Scripture of God's vision for community.

A gentle companion, Kate Boyd walks alongside those who have questions but can't ask them for fear of being labeled by or cast out of their communities. An Untidy Faith is a guidebook for those who want to be equipped with practices to rebuild their faith and shape their communities to look more like Jesus. Here's Kate in her own words:

Q: What gave you the idea to write An Untidy Faith?

Over the last few years, I have noticed an uptick in the Christian community of conversations around “deconstruction.” In listening to those conversations, I realized that there was a segment of the population who are working through their beliefs that did not seem to be represented. Most were talking about their deconversions or how people shouldn’t be deconstructing at all, but there were people like me who had walked through a season of renovating belief and practice while still remaining committed to Jesus. As more and more people were beginning to ask questions because of the many scandals and idols within white American evangelicalism that have been revealed over the last few years, I realized that because I had walked through this journey before that I may be able to create a space to meet those like me there and provide guidance to the way of Jesus and a bigger faith full of joy.

Q: Who will benefit from reading An Untidy Faith?

My initial audience tends to be people like me—millennials raised as evangelicals. However, as I have been gathering a community and writing the book, I have found that as often as someone in their 30s or 40s resonate with these topics, I also find those from older generations who are walking through the same journey now or trying to understand their children’s current journeys. While I also am generally focused on lay people, I think it will also be a helpful tool for church leaders to understand the mind and desires of those who are deconstructing or disentangling their faith.

Q: Why do you think this book is important for right now?

An Untidy Faith is important for this moment because deconstruction is not going away, and we have reached a point where many who were tearing down parts of their faith are looking for a way to rebuild a faith that is holistic, authentic, and joyful. Many lack the vocabulary or resources to go about creating a new theology and practice that connects to global and historic Christianity while existing in their current context. An Untidy Faith connects the readers to stories from the global church and examines some of today’s most relevant topics to provide a way for rebuilding and reshaping ideas about them in order to live out a faith that looks more like Jesus and that works for every time, place, and people.

Q: What are some of the topics An Untidy Faith covers?

An Untidy Faith covers a wide range of topics with intention. I wanted to help people process by example and provide information related to the topics that are being widely discussed today. The book then covers how to adjust one’s relationship with the Bible, the relationship between righteousness and justice and what that means for how we love our neighbors, the ways we have misused and misunderstood the Kingdom of God, how the end of the world is discussed in the Bible and how it changes how we relate to all of creation, what to look for in leaders and discipleship that lead to healthy and whole disciples, and reframing the work of evangelism and missions in today’s world.

Q: Which chapter did you most enjoy writing and why? 

My favorite chapter in the book is chapter 11, “In Spirit and In Truth.” I think this may be my favorite because it draws on themes very close to my heart as to how we view the purpose of church and how we frame worship. In some ways, I think it is at the heart of all the other topics—how our entire lives fit together in worshipping God every moment of every day. Situating worship within the context of all we do rather than in a few hours we spend per week has changed how I approach all of my life as a follower of Jesus. I think it is one of the most impactful ideas to grasp for the church writ large today.

Q: What do you want readers to take away from An Untidy Faith? 

At the end of An Untidy Faith, I hope that readers find the permission they seek to ask questions, rework big ideas, and find joy again in their walk with Jesus. I also hope they find new processes and perspectives for engaging with those questions and finding their feet in their faith again. Most of all, I hope they walk away seeing that Jesus is better, and walking in his way is how we give hope to the world.

As Kate and I have traveled, we have often joked in litotes—or massive understatement. If we eat an awesome bowl of sticky toffee pudding or see a view of the English Channel on a gorgeous day, we'll say, "This does not suck." So here is an endorsement of her book: This does not suck! (Also, what Kaitlyn Schiess said in the banner ad above. It’s a much needed work.)

Want more from Kate? Find her here:

Website: kateboyd.co

Instagram: @kateboyd.co

Twitter: @thekateboyd

Untidy Faith Newsletter: kateboyd.co/newsletter

Podcast: kateboyd.co/podcast

Announcing the 2023 San Miguel de Allende Writers Workshop

Join hostess Debora Annino and me, along with other writers, in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a Spanish Colonial town that has served as a gathering place for artists and writers since the 1930s. The enchantment of San Miguel delights with its charming colonial architecture, iconic Parroquia, award-winning restaurants, Latin music, and lively literary and arts community. The fourth annual five-day, four-night retreat includes the following:

• Writing Workshops led by yours truly

• One-on-One Writing Consultation

• Transportation to/from airport

• Shared room accommodations in private home and local B&B

• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners

• Walking tour of San Miguel de Allende

• Mexican Art Tour

• Shopping in Mercado de Artesanias

• Latin-music dinner

• Volunteer opportunity with Little Things Matter Foundation to serve local community

* private room $350 additional fee

Airfare not included

5 Trends in the Self-Publishing Book Market

I just finished teaching a week-long course in self-publishing for ministry. As I teach it every year, I watch for trends, and here’s what stuck out this year: 

• The continuing rise of audio. As demand continues for audiobooks, it also gets ever easier to produce audio versions. Writer’s Digest says “Audiobooks are the fastest growing format in publishing.” By 2027, projected income is in the billions. Creating an audio version of your book means more listeners, from commuters back on the road to parents scrubbing floors needing free hands to the visually impaired. Podcasts are up; so are audio books.

• More iterations. We used to think of self-publishing in terms of either print-heavy e-books or stacks in the garage of print-heavy print books. Now we have gift books. Workbooks. Print-on-demand books. Books with black-and-white photos. Books with color photos. Audio books. And so many more.... And let’s not forget comic books and graphic novels. In fact, let’s talk about the latter. 

A graphic novel is a narrative or collection of comic stories, often hand-drawn and separated into panels. Maus (Pulitzer and American Book award honors) and American-Born Chinese (National Book Award and Printz Award honors, plus a Disney+ series) are both excellent works that have helped take the graphic-novel genre mainstream—along with some help from Manga, once a niche genre. Newsy.com says the sub-genre of graphic novels saw a growth of 171 percent in 2021 compared to 2020, and that amounts to a little more than 24 million books sold last year. The self-publishing market has continued to expand to accommodate writers and visual artists who, in the past, had a tougher time publishing. Demand has driven invention.

• More data journalism. One of our speakers, Brandon Giella of Giella Media is an expert on data journalism. He showed us this holy-moly graphic on five megatrends in data journalism. Visual storytelling is hot. And it’ll reach boiling as we continue to shift away from words toward visuals. The graphs in this blog post tell stories at a glance. People love sidebars and graphs, narratives in visual form. Even a Bible study can include a graph—like the number of times the apostle Paul uses gunh to mean "wife" instead of “woman” (more often). I’d love to see a Bible study that includes a word cloud showing how often the word “love” shows up in Ephesians 5.    

• Continually growing global reach. Here are the number of internet users in a sampling of five countries with large English-speaking populations: 

1. Australia, 21 million

2. Canada, 33 million 

3. Kenya,  46 million 

4. USA, 288 million

5. India, 749 million 

Internet use means demand for downloadable information. E-books can go where it would take months to deliver a physical book, even if people could afford to order them. So e-book publishing companies increasingly pitch their international reach as a reason to publish with them. 

• More library distribution. In a New Yorker article last September, “The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books,” author Daniel Gross said, “Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do.” Instead of selling e-books and audio books to libraries, publishers sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders like OverDrive, which sells lending rights to libraries. Often expiration dates accompany those rights, making e-books more expensive than print books for libraries. But that development is great for writers, because it gives our publishers more power over prices. That higher price tag has actually not discouraged libraries from buying, as they see such demand for e-books. According to Gross’s research, in 2020, the Denver Public Library increased its digital checkouts by more than sixty per cent, to 2.3 million, and spent about a third of its collections budget on digital content, up from 20 percent the previous year. Libraries now join an elite group when their "borrows" reach the benchmark of more than a million e-book downloads. What that means for my students: When considering which self-publishing companies to select, writers are more apt to look for distributors such as Overdrive on a list of publisher’s partners before committing. And often they find it.  

At one time, people said e-books were dead. They also said that about print books. Want to self-publish a book? What are you waiting for? 

Happy 75th, Dolly Parton!

I asked my student, Misty, to share with my readers some of her vast knowledge about her shero, Dolly Parton, who turns 75 today. Misty's mom went to high school with Dolly, and when Misty asked her parents to host us in their home this past fall, they pulled out the yearbooks. That's Misty's index finger on Dolly's senior picture. In the group shot below, we show off the "What Would Dolly Do?" t-shirts Misty (second from left) gave us.

So now from Misty Hedrick I give you...

Five Reasons to Love Dolly Parton

1. Billboard estimates Dolly's current catalog at nearly 5,000 songs. That makes Dolly Partonthe most prolific living songwriter. She writes poetry, screenplays, and Broadway musicals, and she starred in hit movies like 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias. And Dolly now churns out Netflix specials based on her songs, like Jolene and Two Doors Down.  

2. From farm-raised to superstardom, Dolly probably never worked 9 to 5 a day in her life. Actually, she recently stated her day begins at 3 AM. Dolly’s business acumen speaks for itself. She owns a publishing company and the rights to her songs. Her award-winning theme park, Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, attracts 4 million visitors a year while providing four thousand jobs and invigorating job growth in surrounding communities. Although she visits the park often, she never rides the roller coasters. 

3. Dolly Parton gives back. She raised $9M for victims of wildfires that swept through the Smokies in 2016; and she donated $1M to Covid-19 vaccine research. But the real jewel in her generous crown? Dolly’s Imagination Library sends books to children ages birth to 5 years (130 million books at last count). She credits her father, who could not read or write, as the inspiration behind Imagination Library and her title “the Book Lady.”

4. Dolly loves her husband. She met Carl Dean, her husband of 54 years, at the Wishy-Washy Laundromat one day after she moved to Nashville. They eloped two years later, though her new record label wanted her to stay single. At 50 years, they renewed their vows, prompting Dean to dub Dolly his second wife. He stays out of the limelight, but Dolly says they enjoy road-tripping in their camper, and he loves her fried chicken.

5. Dolly Parton loves Jesus. Her faith shines through in her grateful, humble attitude, hard-working spirit, and ever-inclusive soul. Her songs speak of prayer and the power of the gospel to help her through hard times. Dolly’s latest hits include God Only Knows with For King & Country, and There Was Jesus with Zach Williams. Although she calls herself a “Backwoods Barbie,” Dolly always says, “where it counts, I’m real.”

Little Things Matter: A Story of Suffering, Survival, and Legacy

When Barry Annino set out to write a book on life after a terminal diagnosis, his wife, Debora, embarked on her own writing journey. Their new memoir chronicles their experience in “suffering, survival and legacy” from their two very different perspectives. In this Q&A, Debora (seen below with one of the girls whose lives she is working to improve) shares insights about keeping the faith during her own recent battle with breast cancer and the steps she’s taking to continue her journey of writing and service through the Little Things Matter Foundation.

Debora, you wrote this book after your husband’s diagnosis with a terminal illness. What was your original intention behind it?

Writing about suffering was never my original plan. Before Barry was diagnosed with Stage IV liver cancer, I was writing about my journey along El Camino de Santiago, the ancient route of pilgrims and seekers across Northern Spain. But that writing journey took a left turn after Barry became ill. At that point, I realized I had entered a new chapter in our lives, so I set that project aside and focused on what was in front of us. During our crisis, my CaringBridge journal became my writing outlet. Meanwhile, Barry had become interested in documenting his experience and the new point of view he was developing. Eventually, our stories—and our paths—converged into this book, Little Things Matter, and a charitable foundation by the same name.

You had a crash course in suffering and have come out of it with some wisdom. What has been your source of hope in suffering?

I’ve learned that during any trial we are going through – I’ve had friends suffer job losses, illness, the anxiety of isolation, tough stuff – if you keep your focus on the hope of the future instead of the bog of despair, it helps carry you through. A harsh, sometimes terrible reality is that people suffer. I have a dear friend and former professor whose adult son committed suicide during COVID-19. He was in his 40s with a wife and young son. My friend also lost her husband when her boys were teenagers. So, yes, there is suffering that comes from mental illness and things that overwhelm us. But there is also suffering that comes from being human and living in a broken world. We can’t escape it, but we can learn to get through it with the hope that gives us the ability to endure and see the good even amidst the pain.

How do you maintain hope in the future?

For me, coming from a faith-based perspective, thinking of the greater good that can come out of this gives me hope. This current trial takes my daughter and me to a place of growth that is more significant than where we were before. It is a painful journey, and some days we are just pushing through. Yet, I’m learning that difficulty, challenges, and discomfort lead us to become who we are meant to be—that is if we allow ourselves to learn from it. Barry left this earth a greater man because of his journey of suffering. He acquired a deeper understanding of the purpose of life and greater compassion for others.

How did seeing your husband’s journey through the lens of faith affect your attitude about terminal illness?

Barry didn’t want to go through what he had to go through, but by his own admission, he was happier for it. It was very comforting to me to understand the power of transformation in Barry’s life. There are confidence and grounding that come from knowing that what we’re going through today does have a purpose. If we go back to my faith perspective, scripture says in this world there will be trouble. Knowing that we aren’t alone, we do have Christ who came to help us, and one day all shall be well.

Your faith seems to be a source of courage for you. Can you explain how this works?

Sure, I can try. Easter before last, I was in church, and during my time of worship, I imagined Barry standing next to Jesus. He had a big smile on his face, and he was staring down at me, and I got this feeling that where he now lives is so much better than where we are. And then there was this other time when I was walking my neighborhood, and there was this absolutely beautiful orange and pink sky. I thought if that was just a small glimpse of heaven’s beauty, there is something beautiful ahead. Knowing that God’s place is more beautiful than the glow of a sunset, I’m not afraid of dying or where I’m going. I’m only concerned about the wellbeing of those I leave behind.

What lessons can you share now that you are enduring your own experience with cancer?

Getting this diagnosis after losing Barry feels significant. Of course, it leaves me wondering what it means. It is hard not to ask "Why?" When I began to look for answers for Barry, I recall that he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to be consumed with researching cancer. It becomes overwhelming. Now that I’m experiencing this myself, I understand why he wasn’t being more proactive. I have felt the same. I want to enjoy my days without all my thoughts being consumed by cancer. One of Barry’s quotes we used in the book is, “Even if I live to be 80, I realize I’m on the meter.” You realize that life is short. So I try to focus on what he did, which is helping others through our foundation. 

Tell us about that.

One of my greatest passions is supporting meaningful projects in Mexico that generate long-term impact through our non-profit, Little Things Matter. Examples of our work include raising chickens and organic farming. Both provide much-needed nutrition but also education, skills-building, and economic opportunities. We invest in educational-enrichment classes for children in marginalized communities, and we host an engaging week-long summer camp for children that teaches about creation care and their value, having been made in the image of God. Some of these projects have been interrupted by COVID-19, but we have found other ways to keep investing in communities in areas of need during this pandemic by distributing food to the most vulnerable and providing children with educational activity take-home kits.

What excites you most about completing this book?

My goal was to honor Barry’s life and to know that I shared his message. Documenting it in this book ensures his experience and mode of expression will live on and have an impact. Beyond that personal goal, the real purpose of writing this, or anything, is to bring a new perspective to the world. Knowing that even one person was touched by it brings me joy. 

Since getting started down this road, I’ve been fortunate to have mentors to help me grow as a writer. Now I’m trying to pass it on to others who are beginning their own journey. I have the honor of hosting an annual writer’s workshop and retreat at my home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with Dr. Sandra Glahn (that's you!). As you told aspiring writers at our workshop last January:

My advice, if you are inclined at all to write, is this: Do it. Don’t let that voice telling you someone else has ‘already done it better’ hold you back. Perhaps that better-written book will never make it into the hands of one of your readers, and you will get to be the fortunate soul through whom someone’s life is forever changed.

We all have our voice. If we want, each of us can share a part of ourselves by leaving our stories behind, whether through the history we share with our families, the wisdom we impart to our children, or what we leave for our communities.

When I think about the bigger picture of writing, we each make a unique contribution when we put our stories out there. Some stories are comedies, and some are tragedies. Our story has a little of both, along with a fair amount of hope and redemption. That all of this came out of a personal tragedy makes me appreciate how God works to bring good from all things. It reminds me of a film I recently watched starring Oprah Winfrey called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s about tumor tissue that became the basis of medical research. This tissue did so much to improve research and others’ lives that it seems to give purpose to the tumor in the first place. It feeds my soul to know that through telling the story of my family’s suffering, survival, and legacy, I am part of that continuum—and the journey continues.

To purchase the book, click here to visit Amazon. All proceeds benefit the Little Things Matter Foundation.

Why Write?

Why Write?

Back before I’d ever published anything, I used to think about all the books in the Library of Congress or even just look at all the books on the market. And I'd think, “Do we really need another novel?” “Why yet another book on marriage,” or “Why would someone want to publish another Bible study on Sermon on the Mount?”

What I came to know years later was that each author has a unique perspective on his or her own era. It was said of the men from Issachar that they “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron. 12:32).

Each author also has a unique sphere of influence, which provides a platform through which some readers are more apt to hear from that author than from others—even if the others are more eloquent. So, there will always be a need for more books, new books, even on “old” topics. Richard Baxter wrote wonderful stuff about spiritual formation for Puritan audiences, and it stirs me when I read his words today. Yet, I still love reading about the same topics covered by Eugene Peterson, Calvin Miller, and Ruth Haley Barton. Not only have these people lived in my own time, but I have also had the honor of interviewing both men and, well—Ruth painted my toenails on my wedding day before slipping into her bridesmaid dress. 

My mentor, Dr. Elizabeth Inrig, now living in Redlands, California, is someone whose name I might never have heard had she not served our church in Dallas. Yet having sat under her teaching and seen the way she and her husband, Gary, live out their faith—and cared for me through some difficult days—I approach her written works with a particular openness to learn.

Because of this, every year I exhort my students to go ahead and write on topics that interest them or in the genres they love, even if someone else has already written something better. 

Several years ago, after hearing me talk about this, one of my students showed up the next week with a quote that I have since cherished. It’s from St. Augustine in his De Trinitate (On the Trinity), translated by Edmund Hill: 

Not everything … that is written by anybody comes into the hands of everybody, and it is possible that some who are in fact capable of understanding even what I write may not come across those more intelligible writings, while they do at least happen upon these of mine. That is why it is useful to have several books by several authors, even on the same subjects, differing in style though not in faith, so that the matter itself may reach as many as possible, some in this way others in that.

My advice, then, if you are at all inclined to write, is this: Do it. Don’t let that voice telling you someone else has “already done it better” hold you back. Perhaps that better-written book will never make it into the hands of one of your readers, and you will get to be the fortunate soul through whom someone’s life is forever changed.

Layer Your Literacy

This piece was first published at Fathommag.com.

My earliest memories include visions of my mother reading to me as I sat on her lap. Once I would memorize a story, she’d tease me as moms often do with their repetition-loving youngsters. She’d change one word and wait for me to object.  

When I grew a little bigger, Mom read to my little sister and me nightly from her chair next to our bunk beds. One of the books she read was Winnie-the-Pooh. I still have my original copy of A.A. Milne’s masterpiece. It’s in a state of disrepair, but I prefer it that way. Like the velveteen rabbit whose realness increased as his “skin” grew threadbare, the my Pooh book also grew more real with wear. And upon reaching adulthood, I smiled when I re-read the story, as I caught entirely new layers of meaning. White had written a book for children, but he tucked inside some rewards for the bigger readers too.

My father also contributed to our love for reading—I would often see him with his nose stuck in a National Geographic or American Heritage magazine. In fact, his literacy extended further than I realized, as I would find out later. Much later.

Whenever Dad faced the occasional toilet overflow, he would grab the plumber’s helper and dash into the bathroom calling out, “Double, double toilet trouble! Come a-runnin’ on the double!” I found his trochaic tetrameter clever, and I was also glad that the same man who tossed a wrench when the car gave him fits could so good-naturedly face what I considered a far less agreeable task. I had no clue that he was quoting—or rather, misquoting—anything. 

Nearly four decades later, however, when doing my Ph.D. work, I took a course in Shakespeare tragedies. One evening as I was reading along in MacBeth, I came upon something in Act IV, Scene I that shocked me. The witches bending over their brew were chanting, “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.” 

I burst out laughing.

For years, decades even, I had quoted my dad’s rhyme without realizing he had based it on some of the best-known literature in the English language. I had lacked the background to appreciate it. Yet that deficiency hadn’t kept me from enjoying it at an elementary level. Still, further knowledge added—greatly added—to my appreciation.

Lifelong Journey of Literacy

The road to literacy is paved with many such layers.

I had a similar experience with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. When I checked it out from the school library in the sixth grade, I knew little of the Bible. So when I read in L’Engle’s pages the concept that “perfect love casts out fear,” I thought she had coined a beautiful saying. Only when I read the same phrase in the New Testament several years later did it dawn on me that L’Engle had borrowed her profound concept straight from the elder John himself. Both revelations—the initial discovery of the idea and the later realization of its literary source—delighted me.

And the revelations keep happening.

In the early 1990s, one of my creative-writing professors assigned his graduate students to read Annie Dillard's Pulitzer-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Then we had us write something that mimicked her style. And, frankly, at the time I could hardly stand the book. I wanted Ms. Dillard to get on with something, anything, other than what I considered endless ramblings about nature. Still, the class’s results proved interesting, even if for some (myself included) Dillard’s work provided nothing more than an opportunity for parody.

Fast forward a few decades, and I’m a writing professor teaching the same class in the same institution. So, a few years back, I gave my students the same assignment. And I re-read Dillard to refresh my memory. I wanted to be able to catch my students’ allusions, sorting through what they borrowed and what they created.  

And to my utter surprise, I loved the book.

Whereas in the past I had read too little of Shakespeare, Thoreau, and Pliny to appreciate Dillard’s references to them, now I understood. And whereas in the past I had read too little history even to know what “anchoresses” were, this time when I found them in Dillard’s similes, I caught her meaning. I found myself glad to have yielded my youth to years of learning.

Whatever level of literary understanding we might have achieved, we are always becoming better readers. It’s a lifelong journey. We start out on the dirt path of plain understanding—“my father made up an amusing rhyme”; “L’Engle has a wonderful idea”; “Dillard writes only of nature.” Yet as we reread texts, we find that children are not the only ones who grow in literacy.  

And those of us who make our living using the word to communicate the Word—we of all people can and should aid our readers in their multi-layered literary journeys by ensuring that whatever we offer them is legible, readable, and accessible on many levels.

The Greatest Book Ever Written

It is also why we must read and reread the Bible. We benefit from the way different truths touch us at different times, depending on what God is emphasizing in our lives in the moment. And we equip ourselves to notice when authors are borrowing from its pages.

Consider what John Steinbeck did with Cain and Abel’s story retold as East of Eden. Or what Melville did with Moby-Dick and Jonah. One does not have to know the underlying story to appreciate the conflict between brothers or the joy of triumphing over a whale. But a thoroughgoing understanding of the Genesis story or of Jonah’s voyage adds to the reader’s appreciation of the author’s genius. Think, too, of how Dickens used the idea of substitutionary sacrifice in The Tale of Two Cities. Or how Lewis’s Narnia adventures retell the greatest story ever told.

The Bible itself is our example here, as it speaks to multiple audiences.

Consider that “in the beginning” we have a beautiful garden, but the man and woman choose to sin in a little matter about a tree. In the Gospels we find an innocent man hanging from a tree. And in Revelation we find humanity restored in the garden and invited to eat—you guessed it—from a tree. We can appreciate the wonderful ending in John’s apocalypse without knowing about the first two trees. Yet how much more meaningful the story is to the reader who has journeyed all the way from Eden to paradise restored.

We can read the book of Hebrews and catch the idea that Christ is supreme without knowing the story of Israel carrying around a tabernacle in the wilderness and what all the accessories symbolized. Yet Hebrews makes more sense, holds more meaning, as we grow and find layer upon layer of literary allusion. 

Think of Jesus on the cross crying, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” The words and the angst behind them are clear enough. Yet consider the even more powerful punch they pack when the reader knows the Son of David is quoting his ancestor King David right out of his Hebrew Bible.

As people of the word—and as publishers, writers, and sellers of books—we depend on the communication of words for life, both temporal and eternal. And the path to aural and written literacy is a lifelong road with many layers from the dirt path to the highway. 

The best works, the books destined to be classics, the books our readers deserve, get better and better as we grow.

On Narratives and Central Propositions

Someone asked me this question recently: "Do authors (of classic literature, broadly, and the Bible, specifically) have an agenda/thesis/big idea/etc. in mind before/when they write? Or do they start writing and let an agenda emerge?"

And I said I think it depends on the genre.

If someone picked up a modern hymn book and tried to find a thesis, they’d be hard pressed to do so. Yet they would find a certain organization. I think the same is true with the Psalms. The psalms are a collection. Same with Proverbs. People look for outlines and central ideas on those books and…nada. That may even be the case with Song of Songs. For sure I think those who see a beginning-middle-end structure to Song of Solomon are pressing a later Greek storytelling structure on a 10th-century-BC book that was more likely chiastic if there is actually even a story to it.

I think the apostle Paul did have an organization in mind with the Book of Ephesians. In that book we see such a clear difference between the first half and the second. There's almost no application in the beginning; but it flips and then there's almost no theory at the end. Rather, application (second half) seems to flow from theory (first half).

The Book of Job seems to answer whether there is a clear cause/effect relationship between sin and suffering. (Often not.) But the work addresses a whole lot of other stuff too. Who knows how mountain goats calve? Who names the stars? Who keeps the ocean within its border? Whether the author set out to demonstrate that God is beyond us or whether he wanted to demonstrate how stupid our arguments can be when we accuse the suffering, there does seem to be an argument going, but not a sole argument.

Luke seems really into the insider/outsider emphasis, preparing his readers starting with Gentile women in Jesus's genealogy to accept that the Gentiles are “in.” Then he tells us about Jesus's encounter with the Syrophoenician woman. And the Roman centurion. He emphasizes believing Gentiles in a way we don’t see in other Gospel writers. But I’m not sure that means he set out only to do that when he puts together his history for Theophilus.

I think in Genesis, we’ve missed the boat by going with an "Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Joseph" outline. If we replaced Joseph with Judah, we’d see that the author following the Messianic line from Genesis 3, and we’d no longer view Tamar’s story as a weird interruption to the Joseph narrative. Instead, that story serves as a pivot point between Judah selling a brother and Judah offering his life for a brother. Wow. Something has changed! This Gentile woman ("outsider") who was not supposed to give a rip about the Messianic line apparently values it more than he ("insider") does. He is ready to do an honor killing when she is actually the righteous one and he is the one deserving death. And in a O'Connor-misfit-like moment, Judah sees himself. Joseph's story then fits how God is preserving that Messianic line, but the focus is on the line. So yeah, I think Moses was going somewhere and not just telling a general history of humanity and then switching to follow Jacob’s family. From the beginning he seems to be tracing God's hand as he keeps his promise to save humanity through the seed of the woman.

Some classic texts have a concept. Tale of Two Cities…tells the story of a substitutionary death for love.  But that does not mean every chapter has that idea.

Even J. K. Rowling said early on that she was a member of the Church of Scotland, and that if people knew that about her, they might figure out where her series was “going.” But not every chapter has a central idea/thesis.

Many writers also sit down with some characters in mind, and they don’t know where the story will take them. I didn’t write my novels with a central idea in mind. I wanted to “explore” some “themes.” Most stories are wrecked with too much of a didactic thrust.

I do think we do something bad to great texts when we dissect them to find only the ONE thing. When we re-read the Bible in different seasons, different truths jump out. Okay, I do think it’s doing violence to the text to make the stones in the Goliath story = faith, hope, and love or something that has nothing to do with the actual story. Or to make the story of Lydia only a treatise on women in the business world—which is not how her story functions at all in the Book of Acts.  But still, I might identify with the Prodigal’s older brother in one season and with the father in another. And with the prodigal himself in yet another. Jesus told that story to tell listeners something about God and grace, but he also did it in the presence of Pharisees. So the point of view we bring to a story might give us a different take-away from what someone else takes, or even what we ourselves take away in a different season. That is part of the beauty of story.

The beauty of a “Who is my neighbor, Good Samaritan” narrative is that it does way more than provide a dictionary definition of "neighbor." If Jesus was so set on the one thing, a Webster’s definition would have done a better job of closing the gap of potential for “missing IT.”

What do you think? How would you have answered?

Seminary Online: Isn't That an Oxymoron?

I confess, I’m a slow convert to distance education. But I’m coming around.My reservations have stemmed from my commitment to embodiment. Genesis starts with God’s dignifiying of physicality in the first chapter, and that theme runs clear through the Incarnation to the bodily resurrection. Isn’t our faith unique in its appreciation for physical presence?And if that’s the case, how can any kind of decent education happen without embodiment? How can people possibly learn about our God without engaging five senses in the content? Doesn't the Eucharist include taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound? As does baptism. How can somebody grow in Christ without the senses?Yet, as I said, I’m coming around….Of course, I still believe face-to-face is best. After all, the elder John wrote, “Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full (2 John 1:12). And his next letter contains a similar sentiment: “I have much to write you, but I do not want to do so with pen and ink” (3 John 1:13). Clearly, he thought non-physical communication was inferior to the real thing, especially when he had so much to say.But still he wrote, didn’t he? In fact, aren't letters and book forms of distance education? Think of all the things we've learned through books and documentaries and movies and plays....The biblical epistles certainly are forms of such education. Paul wrote to believers in Asia Minor (Ephesians), in Philippi, Thessalonica, Colossae… John wrote to believers in seven churches (Rev 1–3), and to the elder and the elect lady. And these apostles packed their letters with of content that went far beyond accounts of their most recent events, family news, church updates, and political drama. They talked theology, mixing orthodoxy with orthopraxy—which is the goal of distance education.My introduction to actually teaching via distance ed came when I led my first course in Italy. Students from across the world were able to participate because we did not require them to be based in Texas. So even though I got to teach in an embodied setting, I had many students who could be there only because they were getting most of their training by distance. This past year in Italy, we had people from Albania, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, and the US, and their varied perspectives added to the richness of everyone’s experience.I took my first plunge into teaching a live distance course last semester. In what I describe as a Hollywood Squares setup, twelve of us logged on at the same time and could see each other on the screen in squares of four rows divided into three columns. And inside those squares were living, breathing, interacting humans.Our semester began with a student in Houston having to leave class early because victims of Hurricane Harvey—strangers she planned to feed and house— were arriving. The following month, a student in Florida endured the hurricane that tore through that state. So we heard about the rescue efforts from someone who was there. Then a student living in Las Vegas told of the shootings in her city from the perspective of someone ministering on the ground.Through the accounts of these students, I saw that what we had lost in embodiment, we had gained in broadness of perspective. And not only that, each of those providing “boots on the ground” was able to stay in his or her respective ministry rather than having to uproot to move to Dallas thanks to distance education. So in a real way, ministry was multiplied through our flexible learning platform.Paul expressed his longing to see people he was discipling by long distance. Here's a sampling:

• Romans 1:11 - I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong.
• Romans 15:24 - When I go to Spain…I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.
• 2 Timothy 1:4 - Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.

Yet while awaiting the ideal, he used every opportunity to impart truth through the means available to him. And that’s what I hope to do too.This spring for the first time, Dr. Gary Barnes and I are offering a course in sexual ethics that addresses many of the issues ministry workers must be equipped to handle in their work. The lecturers we invited last year cannot come to teach every semester. But thanks to their agreement to let us film them, we can offer some of their good content to students who live all over the world. And those students don't have to quit their jobs and relocate to have access to the information.Indeed, thanks to distance ed, more and more international students are able to stay in their home countries rather than uprooting families, which means they can forego all the inconvenience and expense of relocating. Even as visas become harder to come by, distance education allows content to penetrate into areas where other governments are at odds with ours. The result is a strengthened church across the world.Last week two of my distance students showed up on the Dallas campus and gave me big hugs. It was great to meet them face to face after hours seeing each other only via screens. There's no doubt about it—I will always prefer the ability to wipe a tear and deliver a hug. But I’m a convert to distance ed. Because I see that it doesn’t have to be either/or. Through the magic of internet interaction, education can be both/and. 

Fathom Magazine interview w/ me about Vixens

This interview with me ran in the latest issue of Fathom Magazine.  Today we’re happy to have as our guest Dr. Sandra Glahn. Sandi earned her ThM at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) and her PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in Humanities–Aesthetic Studies. A professor in the Media Arts and Worship department at DTS, she teaches courses in writing, medieval art/spirituality, gender, and sexual ethics. She is the author of more than twenty books, including the Coffee Cup Bible Study series. But today we want to talk with her about her latest book Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting the Sexualized, Vilified, Marginalized Women of the Bible (Kregel Academic), which just came out.

Tell us about Vindicating the Vixens.

Vindicating the Vixens has been on my heart and mind for more than a decade. As I studied history and cultural backgrounds at the doctoral level, I ended up revisiting some of our Western-influenced interpretations of the biblical text.For example, the woman Jesus met at the well in Samaria had five husbands, true enough (see John 4). But why do most people assume that means she was faithless and immoral? Women in her time and place did not divorce husbands five times. The man with the most recorded divorces had only three. If a woman did initiate legal proceedings, she had to do so through a male. Women could not simply walk into a court of law and speak on their own behalf. So, it’s unlikely that “the Samaritan woman” had divorced five husbands.Additionally, when we read that this woman’s current man was not her own, we assume she was living with some guy. Because that’s what it would mean in the West. But in her world, it is far more likely that she had to share a husband in a polygamous relationship in order to eat.Put these factors together, and you realize this person was probably not a beautiful young woman with loose morals. More likely, she was an older woman who had endured the death of a husband several times (war was the number one cause of death for men), been dumped a time or two, and consequently having to share a husband in order to survive. Additionally, the text says she was waiting for, looking with hope for, the Jewish Messiah (4:25).So we have, probably wrongly, assumed this woman was guilty of sexual promiscuity, and that Jesus was confronting her about her sin. More likely, Jesus was bringing up her greatest point of pain before revealing to her that he is the very Messiah for whom she has been waiting. For everyone else in Jesus’ world, the Lord seems to subtly veil who he is. But with this broken woman hanging on to hope, he comes right out with it.This woman is one of many whom the contributors to Vindicating the Vixens reconsider in light of what we know about cultural backgrounds, not only from new data but also from having more varied “eyes on the text.”

You’ve been known to talk about the importance of having varied eyes on the text. What do you mean by that?

Scholars from underrepresented groups looking at the Bible see what many of us in privileged positions have missed. They have brought to the text observations from a powerless perspective, which is the perspective of the typical person to whom Jesus ministers. (Like this great message from the perspective of those who are hearing impaired.) The body of Christ is made up of many parts that need each other to function as a healthy whole. But we’ve missed out on what some of those parts have to offer.In our book the contributors look afresh at Eve, Hagar, Sarah, Tamar, Rahab, Deborah, Ruth, Huldah, Bathsheba, Vashti, Mary Magdalene, The Samaritan Woman, Junia, and even the Virgin Mary—who gets marginalized by Protestants. And we look at them through the eyes of sixteen biblical scholars, each of whom hold a high view of scripture. And they all hold at least one advanced degree in Bible and theology. They are men and women; complementarian and egalitarian; American and Australian; black, white, Arab, and authors of books like Discipleship for Hispanic Introverts. Their varied backgrounds mean they bring insights in the text that the majority culture in North American has often missed—and exported. And as a result, the authors’ combined efforts provide a fresh look at the kindness of God and his heart for the vulnerable. (You can watch some of them talking about this book.)

What made you decide to do this project?

First, I believe men and women—not just husbands and wives—are supposed to partner in ministry. The church father Jerome had Paula partnering with him, though many think theologically trained women are a recent innovation. They are not. A greater emphasis on social history (as opposed to studying only troop movements, kings, and empires) has come from the academy due to women’s greater involvement in higher education in the past half-century. Trained social historians bring new ways of culling out data from the text—like what I just said about marriage practices in the Near East.But also, my deep friendship with some international students, especially those from Mexico, combined with travels to several continents told me we needed more than a Western perspective when doing observation, interpretation, and application.Additionally, part of my job used to involve serving as editor-in-chief of DTS Magazine for Dallas Theological Seminary, and I also teach theologically trained writers. So not only have I spotted some great writers, but I learned of projects people were doing that needed greater audiences. Sometimes the great writers were those doing this work.As a sampling, there was the student doing a thesis on Bathsheba (Sarah Bowler); a scholar who wrote a book on Arabs in the Bible that changed how I saw Hagar (Tony Maalouf); and a whole corpus of work on Bible stories that included women and men in need of vindication (Carolyn Custis James). For ten years or more I’ve been keeping a mental note of how these all fit together, and I could hardly wait to coordinate it.

What do you hope to accomplish?

Originally, I hoped only to help us read the Bible more accurately as we read about these women. But a happy result of the project was that the team of scholars went beyond simply exonerating those wrongly vilified or marginalized to explore what we have missed in the larger story by misunderstanding the smaller stories and how they fit into the whole. Now I see how the Tamar-posing-as-a-professional-sex-worker narrative fits into Joseph’s story in Genesis—which scholars have often assumed she merely interrupted. What emerged from all these micro-narratives was and is a clearer vision of God’s heart for the vulnerable in the meta-narrative.Before even writing, all of the authors agreed to donate profits to the International Justice Mission. So in a tangible way, we also hope our scholarship will lead to lives changed for the better for “the least of these.”

Read the chapter on Rahab by Eva Bleeker.

You can read an excerpt from Vindicating the Vixens about the context and cues from one of these heroines, Rahab.

In terms of ramifications for scholarship, I hope readers will see the absolute necessity of inviting to the table a more diverse group doing translation and interpretation than what we have typically had. I hope that we will never again see a translation of the Bible published that has only men or only women or only people from one “camp” looking at the text, but that we will instead celebrate our differences and seek diligently to include a variety of people due to our belief in God’s love for unity in difference.

Where can we find Vindicating the Vixens?

You can find the book at Amazon, Christianbook.com, and at the Dallas Seminary Book Center

Interview with a Charlotte Pastor/Author

I'm happy to have as my guest today pastor/author Winn Collier, whose writing I love. His latest project is an epistolary novel—that is, a story told through the medium of letters written by one or more of the characters. It’s titled Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church.

SG: Did you have in mind any specific congregations as you wrote?

Winn: I carried all the people and churches I’ve been part of my entire life. And of course, All Souls Charlottesville, the people I serve now, is so interwoven with my life that they are always with me.

SG: Charlottesville has been at the epicenter of America’s culture wars in recent months. How has your church continued to be a voice of hope in the midst of such toxic events?

Winn: The Klan rally in July, then the Alt-right rally in August, were horrific. I've never encountered such evil so in my face. And the aftermath is far from over. Although many of the agitators were from outside Charlottesville, the evil messages tore into racial wounds and sins in our town that we've never dealt with properly. My prayer is for genuine repentance and restitution. Through all this, though, my conviction about the unique and subversive way of Jesus and the Kingdom has been radically renewed. The way of Jesus is in some way contrary to (or a corrective of) every other power structure, politic and ideal. To stand with the oppressed while loving the enemy—that's a strange thing. Justice really does need Jesus, and our church is trying to learn how to be people faithful to the strange way of Jesus.

SG: In the letter called “Whiskey and Biscuits,” your Pastor Jonas character speaks a word to anyone who has ever grown weary of the church's liturgy. Jonas views liturgy as a gift: “What a relief it is to know we don't carry this faith alone. Liturgy allows us to affirm truths we might not even believe just yet, or truths we're simply too exhausted to hold up with our own weary prayers.” What did you have in mind when you wrote that?

Winn: Our church sings a song that our worship leader wrote called “Our Salvation is Bound Up Together.” I think our communal existence, the fact that we require one another to live well and whole and that we are all bound up in the life of the Trinity means that as we come together with our bodies and our voices and embody the love of God in our liturgy, grace happens. Sometimes we think that it’s disingenuous to enact things we don’t “feel” at the moment, things that aren’t existentially potent for us. But I think that showing up (in our marriages and our friendships, as with our church) is exactly the sort of thing that makes up what we call faith. It’s doing what we can’t see (or feel) just yet. This is our work. And over the long story, the slow work of the gospel will create and remake and heal.

SG: I’ve appreciated your non-fiction. What made you decide to write a work of fiction this time around?

Winn: A dear friend of ours in Colorado asked if I had any advice for her church that was searching for a pastor. She was on the search team, and she sounded exhausted. I've been on both sides of that search, and it exhausted me just thinking about it. I remembered all the shenanigans that are so often tied up in this song and dance. So after sending her an email that I'm sure was mostly unhelpful, my mind and my pen went to writing a story. And Love Big, Be Well emerged. When I’ve told some folks about the book, they’ve assumed that I was using the medium of fiction as a tangential vehicle to only deliver a message (and I can understand the confusion). I think that would be a disastrous way to have written this book, any fiction really. I don’t know that my story succeeded, but I do know that I’ve tried my best to give it a chance to stand up on its own.

SG: Why did you decide to tell the story through letters?

Winn: Maybe it was partly because the whole thing started with a letter to me, but also because there’s something deeply human about a personal letter, the time it takes to write it, the care that’s given in thinking about the person(s) you’re writing to. I wrote another book called Let God that was reworking some of François Fénelon’s (a 17th century French Bishop) letters to spiritual friends in King Louis’ court. I think I’ve always been fascinated with letters.

SG: What authors have shaped you as a writer or as a pastor?

Winn: Certainly, Wendell Berry, with his fictional town of Port William has given me a wide sense of place and the beauty of ordinariness and the sacramental nature of our common lives. Eugene Peterson has influenced my understanding of ‘pastor’ and ‘church’ more than any other person. Barbara Brown Taylor and Fleming Rutledge are wonderful pastor-theologians who take words seriously. And Will Willimon – he makes my spine straighter whenever I hear him preach.

SG: What is your biggest hope for your book?

Winn: I'd find real satisfaction if people put down Love Big, Be Welland felt a renewed hopefulness. There's a lot of despair and sorrow overwhelming us these days—and for good cause. Yet I believe that hope and goodness are the truer story. I think friendship is truer than our sense of isolation and estrangement. I believe that God’s love is more powerful than all our hatred piled up together. I believe the church, for all our ills, really does—when we're true to who God has made us to be—exist as a community of love, hospitality and healing.

Vindicating the Vixens

On March 23 at DTS, I moderated a panel discussion with Dr. Glenn Kreider, Sarah Bowler, Sharifa Stevens, Dr. Timothy Ralston, and Karla Zazueta about women in the Bible whom we have either vilified or marginalized. Vindicating the Vixens (Kregel Academic, forthcoming) is the result of a diverse team of 16 male and female theologians who’ve partnered to take a second look at vilified and marginalized women in the Bible, and we got some of the contributors in Dallas together to talk about our findings. The church has often viewed women’s stories through sexist eyes, resulting in a range of distortions. In this panel discussion, three of us DTS profs and three graduates talk about the women we explored.Order Vindicating the Vixens.

Hear My Story on the ReStory Podcast Today

Thanks to my friend Mary DeMuth for hosting me on her ReStory podcast. Today I'm telling my story there. Check it out.

Introducing "Fathom"

Recently some former students launched a terrific new site called Fathom. I wrote an article, "In the Spirit of Thomas," for their inaugural issue. It's for those like me who have wrestled with existential doubt. It's a tough topic with some gritty details, but I hope it blesses you.

#Free on Kindle: July 4 only

Check out the updated edition of my first novel. It's free today only on Kindle.       

Hillary's Not the Only Woman to Make History

Want a summer read that’s part adventure story, part biography, part introduction to biblical manuscripts, part historical drama, and part faith journey? If yes, check out Janet Soskice’s The Sisters of Sinai.

The main characters are identical twins Agnes and Margaret Smith of Scotland. Their travels lead, among other places, to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. There Agnes discovered one of the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels ever found.The sisters’ staunch Presbyterian father, widowed shortly after their births in 1843, raised his girls as one might raise boys in the Victorian era—educated, physically active, and engaged in the life of the mind. And he kept a promise that whenever his daughters learned a language, he would take them to where that language was spoken. Because the twins loved to travel, early on they mastered French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Their deep interest in the Bible and its languages eventually led them to add Hebrew, ancient and modern Greek, Arabic, and old Syriac to their resumes. It was knowledge of the latter, known only to a few people on earth, that opened the doors to Agnes’s big discovery.Both sisters were widowed early after inheriting massive sums from distant relatives. One twin had been married to a man who traveled widely; the other, to the librarian and manuscript custodian at Cambridge. Reading of the sisters’ unlikely educations combined with their father’s promise, the means to travel, and the contacts their husbands brought into their lives will leave readers marveling at the providence of God. A pilgrimage to the sites of Abraham and Moses took the women to the land of the pyramids, and a hunch about forgotten manuscripts led straight to a dark cupboard in St. Catherine’s Monastery. Agnes’s discovery had enormous ramifications at a time when people were questioning the now-established early dating of New Testament manuscripts.The Sisters of Sinai reads like an adventure book. The author herself has heady credentials: she’s Professor in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College. Writing with the storytelling skill of a novelist combined with the research savvy of a scholar, Soskice recounts the twins’ challenges: traveling on camel and floating the Nile in a time of cholera when women were thought to need male escorts; interpersonal conflicts with jealous scholars who despised the sisters for lacking university degrees; and the misogyny that kept closing doors to the women and minimizing their contributions. But Solskice also provides an introduction to the world of biblical manuscripts that engages rather than makes eyes glaze over. And she draws on diaries to include the sisters’ internal pilgrimages of faith with their good, good God.Take this one to the beach; sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.THE SISTERS OF SINAI: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, by Janet SoskiceIllustrated. 316 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. Published in 2010.

Sampling of Book Titles Inspired by Bible Verses

My dissertation supervisor told me that the Bible and Shakespeare were the two most-used sources for book titles. How many of these biblical phrases do you recognize?

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner

2 Samuel 19:4

An Acceptable Time              

Madeleine L'Engle     

Psalms 66:13

A Time to Kill                        

John Grisham            

Ecclesiastes 3:3

Behold the Man                     

Michael Moorcock      

John 19:5

Butter In a Lordly Dish           

Agatha Christie        

Judges 5:25

I Sat Down and Wept            

Elizabeth Smart         

Psalm 137:1

Clouds of Witness                  

Dorothy L. Sayers       

Hebrews 12:1

Consider the Lilies                 

Iain Crichton Smith    

Matthew 6:28

East of Eden                           

John Steinbeck           

Genesis 4:16

Fear and Trembling             

Søren Kierkegaard    

Philippians 2:12

The Golden Bowl                   

Henry James                

Ecclesiastes 12:6

The House of Mirth                

Edith Wharton            

Ecclesiastes 7:4

I Will Fear No Evil                  

Robert A. Heinlein     

Psalms 23:4

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem   

William Faulkner       

Psalms 137:5

In a Glass Darkly                    

Sheridan Le Fanu       

I Corinthians 13:12

Jacob Have I Loved                 

Katherine Paterson    

Romans 9:13

The Last Enemy                     

Richard Hillary            

I Corinthians 15:26

Lilies of the Field                   

William E.  Barrett    

Matthew 6:28

The Little Foxes                     

Lillian Hellman            

Song of Songs 2:15

Many Waters                         

Madeleine L'Engle     

Song of Songs 8:7

The Millstone                         

Margaret Drabble      

Matthew 18:6

Moab Is My Washpot            

Stephen Fry                

Psalms 60:8

The Moon by Night                

Madeleine L'Engle     

Psalms 121:6

The Needle's Eye                   

Margaret Drabble      

Matthew 19:24

Noli Me Tangere                    

José Rizal                   

John 20:17

Number the Stars                  

Lois Lowry                  

Psalms 147:4

Quo Vadis                             

Henryk Sienkiewicz    

John 13:36 (Vulgate translation)

A Scanner Darkly                    

Philip K. Dick              

I Corinthians 13:12

Stranger in a Strange Land    

Robert A. Heinlein     

Exodus 2:22

The Sun Also Rises                

Ernest Hemingway    

Ecclesiastes 1:5

The Violent Bear It Away      

Flannery O'Connor     

Matthew 11:12 (Douay translation)

The Way of All Flesh             

Samuel Butler            

Joshua 23:14 (Wesley's notes translation)

The Wealth of Nations          

Adam Smith               

Isaiah 61:6

The Wings of the Dove          

Henry James              

Psalms 55:6

Restore My Soul: A Coloring Book Devotional Journey

Meditate using this new coloring book by Ann-Margret Hovsepian.

A couple years ago, my employer sent me to the Frankfurt Book Fair to spot trends. We want to prepare our students for what's coming, not what's been. Frankfurt is the largest book fair in the world, so I spent hours walking the aisles, talking to venders, and scoping out products. And I came home with a couple of coloring books for adults. I had never heard of such a thing! It was like paint by number only using colored pencils instead of paint—and without the numbers. I got to choose what colors I liked best.And sure enough, now they're everywhere, these books. And my friend Ann-Margret Hovsepian has created a nice one especially for helping us think about what matters. She includes a devotional thought with a verse opposite each coloring page. And the pages are thick enough that I could use a small magic marker without having it bleed through. Even non-artists can pull away from the screen and create within boundaries. Check out Restore My Soul.

Art Saves Lives

I just finished reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. The student who brought me the book to read also told me I must listen to an interview in Brainpickings with Gaiman. In it the author tells this story of his 97-year-old cousin, Helen, a Polish Holocaust survivor: “She started telling me this story of how, in the ghetto, they were not allowed books. If you had a book … the Nazis could put a gun to your head and pull the trigger—books were forbidden. And she used to teach under the pretense of having a sewing class… a class of about twenty little girls, and they would come in for about an hour a day, and she would teach them maths, she’d teach them Polish, she’d teach them grammar….“One day, somebody slipped her a Polish translation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind. And Helen stayed up—she blacked out her window so she could stay up an extra hour. She read a chapter of Gone with the Wind. And when the girls came in the next day, instead of teaching them, she told them what happened in the book.“And each night, she’d stay up; and each day, she’d tell them the story.“And I said, ‘Why? Why would you risk death—for a story?’“And she said, ‘Because for an hour every day, those girls weren’t in the ghetto—they were in the American South; they were having adventures; they got away.’“I think four out of those twenty girls survived the war. And she told me how, when she was an old woman, she found one of them, who was also an old woman. And they got together and called each other by names from Gone with the Wind…”Gaiman concluded, “We [writers] decry too easily what we do, as being kind of trivial—the creation of stories as being a trivial thing. But the magic of escapist fiction … is that it can actually offer you a genuine escape from a bad place and, in the process of escaping, it can furnish you with armor, with knowledge, with weapons, with tools you can take back into your life to help make it better… It’s a real escape—and when you come back, you come back better-armed than when you left.”Nelson Mandela once described Chinua Achebe, the most widely read African writer and author of Things Fall Apart, as “the writer in whose presence prison walls fell down.” Achebe’s words sustained him in prison. I once heard Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie say, “Fiction does matter. It can make literal prison walls fall down, but it can also sustain prisoners where they are.”While people in our world tend to think of the art as the painted fingernails instead of the marrow in our bones, ISIS gets what a threat the arts can be to freedom. Consider that CNN ran an article in March titled, “Why ISIS destroys antiquities.” It tells of the numerous historic sites that ISIS has smashed. One of these was the Museum of Islamic Art in Egypt, which contained more than 100,000 pieces. The museum, having recently undergone an eight-year, multi-million dollar renovation, had to close again after its reopening because ISIS planted a car bomb that caused catastrophic damage. The writer of the CNN piece concluded, “The smashed artifacts of the Mosul Museum and the destruction at Nineveh and Nimrud . . .  are the material record of humanity. They are not just for scholars, they are for everyone. They are the text of the past that helps define our future.T. Anderson, the YA author of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad told a group at Calvin College last week, “We think of the arts as dessert, but they change the way we live.”His historical-fiction novel demonstrates this truth vividly as he recounts in it the story of how Leningrad (i.e., St. Petersburg, Russia) was surrounded by Hitler’s troops during WWII and held under siege for three years. Did you catch that? The beautiful city starved out for three years. Hitler’s experts had predicted that everyone would be dead after the first winter. Yet the people lived on and on.Two great factors in Leningrad's survival were the arts and community. Logically speaking, those who survived should have been the ones who stayed in their beds to conserve energy. But those who did so actually tended to die first. In actuality survivors were more likely to be the librarians who held reading groups in twenty-below-zero rooms or the teachers who searched out flats to find orphaned children. In the midst of it all, the famous composer Dmitri Shastakovich created a symphony that retold the story of what the Nazis had done, and the spirit of defiance in that music gave the Russian people hope. The score was smuggled out to the US, where people heard it and came to the aid of Leningrad. Art saved lives.